The California Water Commission has issued a set of policy recommendations to better prepare the state for the next drought. Yet water interests fear the broad proposals could fuel more legislation aimed at overhauling the state’s water rights system.
While the new report attempts to take a more proactive approach to disaster response, it gives weight to arguments that have ignited fierce battles in other policy arenas.
The drought plan has been long in the making. After taking office in 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom recognized the complexity inherent in California’s water issues and directed resource agencies to develop a set of actions for improving the state’s resilience to droughts and floods made worse by climate change. The subsequent Water Resilience Portfolio detailed 140 actions. One of those directed the water commission to survey stakeholders for further policy ideas.
The semi-autonomous commission has served as an advisor to the Department of Water Resources on infrastructure needs and, since the creation of the State Water Resources Control Board in 1967, carries minimal regulatory oversight. It did, however, regain some of its prominence within the agriculture community in 2014, when Proposition 1 tasked it with approving bond money for new storage projects.
The drought plan pulled commission staff in a new direction. Over the span of nearly two years, the agency hosted public workshops, assembled expert panels, solicited feedback from stakeholders and compiled the many comments into a draft report released ahead of the holidays in late 2023.
The white paper was divided into four strategies. It proposed to scale up groundwater recharge by capturing excess flood flows after all other needs are met. To protect endangered species, it called for making more water available to fish populations, while restoring habitat and integrating forest management into drought planning. The report pushed for protecting municipalities through disaster aid, boosting resilience and coordinating land use planning. The one uncontested goal of the drought plan was to improve communication and data collection.
Once the commission approved the final draft earlier this month, the administration immediately applauded the report. California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said the thoughtful recommendations will point the way forward and shared that he is “eager to explore how these ideas can be applied in coming years.” CDFA Secretary Karen Ross added that advancing groundwater recharge projects through the policy recommendations would provide ecosystem benefits, protect drinking water and support climate-resilient agriculture.
Yet the report, from a relatively quiet commission, suddenly raised alarms among the state’s largest water managers.
Jennifer Pierre, State Water Contractors“We were pretty shocked to see some of the recommendations that had been made,” Jennifer Pierre, general manager of the State Water Contractors (SWC), told Agri-Pulse. “This was heavily leaning towards [the environmental groups’] perspective on how the system should be operated. That's what's reflected here. It's not a balanced report that takes into account non-fish and wildlife water users, the rights we have and the realities of how the system is operated.”
SWC partnered with the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority to submit comments. They asserted that the “themes and recommendations made are quite controversial and many would lead to vigorous opposition from water users if attempted as proposed in the draft.”
The top complaint was that staff did not consider current laws and regulations when recommending changes to the administration of water rights, with claims that the proposals are legally infeasible and should be deleted. Environmental interests have been spearheading such pushes to overhaul the water rights system. Those groups also successfully lobbied to include recommendations for reoperating reservoirs to prioritize fisheries.
“Now that might be a perfectly fine social decision that we all collectively make. But who's paying for that?” said Pierre. “You can't just tell people that have been paying for facilities—who own facilities and who have purposes defined for those facilities—that they were just going to start operating them for a different priority.”
SWC and the water authority also took issue with a recommendation to dedicate instream flows to the environment. They urged the commission to instead put more focus on a set of voluntary agreements that promise a more holistic, watershed-wide approach to ecosystem management.
Irrigation districts for West Stanislaus, Patterson and Banta-Carbona stressed many of the same concerns. In a comment letter to the commission, the coalition cautioned that the impediments to scaling up groundwater recharge are formidable and have not been remedied by the state’s streamlined permitting process, temporary permits or the governor’s executive orders. The districts reiterated longstanding frustrations that floodwater pumped into aquifers cannot be credited back to the pumpers.
They also took offense at a statement in the draft report that demand management strategies are considered a fast and inexpensive way to free up water during drought and countered that fallowing crops hurts farmers as well as local economies, disadvantaged communities and food security.
Like the other water providers, the districts feared an overhaul of the water rights system would “create widespread instability and disruption to our economy, environment, the water management landscape and our way of life.” For the last two sessions, agricultural and water interests fiercely fought back state legislation that attempted to reform aspects of the system.
“We're hoping that this doesn't grow legs,” said Pierre, adding that any bills sprouting from the document would require massive educational outreach with lawmakers.
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She said the commission is presenting the report as a consensus, when major water organizations like the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Kern County Water Agency were not consulted.
The irrigation districts argued that the administration’s premise for developing the drought plan is misleading. Borrowing from the governor’s water supply strategy issued in 2022, the report stated that climate change is creating hotter and drier conditions. But the districts pointed out that many climate models predict a similar level of overall precipitation, though it will come more as rain and in flashier patterns.
The state’s ability to quickly pivot from drought to flooding has been a concern for Alexandra Biering, a water policy advocate at the California Farm Bureau. She told Agri-Pulse that it was unusual for the state to make the risky move in 2023 to grant broad flexibility for farmers to capture excess flood flows. It was not a surprise to her that the report’s top goal was to improve recharge.
“This report points out very well that what the state really needs to do is figure out how to adapt and pivot more quickly when we go from those climate extremes year to year,” she said.
Biering explained that the state has “constantly boomeranged” with its budget, suddenly shifting years of drought investments to flood response—an inefficient way to manage limited resources.
She was cautious about the commission promoting watershed-level planning if that meant expanding the water board’s authority with senior water rights. Otherwise, such an approach sounds promising but would require considerable buy-in from locals and a lot of willing partners, she added.
Biering appreciated the report highlighted the value of additional data, specifically with investments in the aerial snow surveys that helped the state avoid potentially disastrous flooding last year. Yet she pointed out that the governor is proposing to cut $6.7 billion for the airborne snow observatory program.
Alexandra Biering, California Farm Bureau“That is really what many of us in the water community would like to see—better information about available water supplies and how they're being used, as opposed to greater oversight and greater control of those water resources at the state level,” she said.
While Biering found value in some aspects of the report, she stressed that it takes funding to implement the actions and pointed out that the state is grappling with the largest budget deficit in more than a decade, meaning the report may not bear fruit for several years.
Despite the attention to environmental justice in the report, interest groups engaged on these issues were not satisfied with the final document, as reflected in comments from the Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability, Clean Water Action and the Community Water Center. They wanted the state to go beyond incentivizing farmers to temporarily fallow land and pushed for strategies to reduce overall demand from agriculture.
Regina Chichizola, executive director of Save California Salmon, was skeptical of groundwater recharge as well. She claimed that saturating the ground in almond orchards or the “poison lands” within the Westlands Water District would drive pollution into drinking water systems.
Commission staff responded to the many concerns by adding clarifying language in places to recognize the conflicting comments.
“We decided not to pursue [water rights] as one of our core strategies, because it is a very controversial topic,” Assistant Executive Officer Laura Jensen explained to the commission. “We've added a paragraph that captures these considerations into water rights and noted that those conversations are continuing to happen and they're continuing to happen outside of our drought paper.”
Staff added text recognizing the impacts of drought on agriculture and how that can impact communities and ecosystems. The final draft clarified that the state needs a better understanding of when environmental and water rights needs are met before diverting flood flows for recharge. That could benefit SWC as it pushes for a cleanup bill to update state code on recharge. Staff also added a paragraph recognizing the voluntary agreements.
When asked for a response to the ongoing concerns with the final draft, Jensen explained to Agri-Pulse that the commission talked with hundreds of people—from tribes, local government, water districts, communities, nonprofit organizations, academia, special districts, local and state agencies, agriculture, environmental groups, and other states and countries.
“The commission heard many different perspectives and considered all input received, but recognizes that its potential strategies may not be embraced by all interests,” she said in a statement. “The commission … hopes state agencies will consider the white paper in their work to prepare for future droughts.”
Jensen and her colleagues received accolades from the commission for the report and for their hard work to get it across the finish line.
“What a great document you put forth,” said Commissioner Kimberly Gallagher. “You did a great job of really bringing all of the [comments] together and putting forth something that was shared. It's this thin line that was agreed upon by a variety of different people with different interests.”
Commissioner Alexandre Makler acknowledged the agency may not be the appropriate venue for unwinding the complexity of the water rights system but hoped the commission could host a forum to “take on some of the thornier issues.” Sandra Matsumoto, meanwhile, called it an indicator of success that so many “folks from across the spectrum” would like to see a different document.
“It's never going to be perfect,” said Commissioner Daniel Curtin. “It's really the trigger to get the ball rolling. There are some substantial issues that the Legislature is going to have to deal with going forward.”
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